Careering off all over again

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Personally, I really wouldn’t. Sports drinks Cambodia.

A great many people do though. I just couldn’t bring myself to drink a bottle of sweat however beautifully it was packaged. Then again, people tuck into tarantulas here, maybe I’m letting my unconscious but constraining cultural prejudices get in the way of a joyful new experience? I’m happy to risk that possibility to be honest, even if I am in a minority who has such qualms about quoffing sweat of unknown origin by the can. I know this, that I must be a minority, because in the absence of my camera I have been compelled to Google ‘Pocari Sweat’ for this post, and discovered this distribution chart of this Japanese Sports Drink. Seems they are sweating all over the world. It must be just me then, who has a problem. Wouldn’t be the first time.

Pocari Sweat was launched here in Cambodia as recently as 1st December 2015 apparently. Gosh. Well, they must have had a humour-defying marketing campaign to get it so ubiquitously available as it appears to be. Or maybe it is actually just delicious? I don’t know, I’ve never tried it, and nor is it on my bucket list to do so.

Unintelligible to me, is that I alone amongst my fellow native English speaking volunteers here in Phnom Penh, seem to find this product name particularly amusingly off-putting. I know it’s childish, and I completely get ‘it’s because it’s to replace electrolytes lost through sweating‘ but even so. It just seems a really improbable success, not least, because I’ve never seen anyone really work up a sweat exercising here anywhere. It is definitely a status drink I’d say here. I’m not even sure the evidence base is there for sports drinks when you do exercise, more marketing than science driving their use for the vast majority I’d say.

Anyway, I’m just putting it out there. This product is, mysteriously, not yet available in the UK, which is especially surprising as it was supposed to be available on the moon by Summer last year. No idea if that happened or not. I really hope not, I really do. Wikipedia-says-so-it-must-be-true:

Lunar Dream Capsule project

On 15 May 2014, Pocari Sweat started a project to send a “dream capsule” to the Moon. The capsule will have the same shape as a Pocari Sweat can and will be filled with Pocari Sweat powder. It was going be launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in October 2015[7] however it is now delayed with a target goal of Summer 2016.[8] Once it arrives, Pocari Sweat will be the first commercial product advertised on the Moon